Save me
by Taintless
Summary: Harry has a resposibility as a hero. How can you save someone who does not want to be saved?


_How can you save someone who does not want to be saved?_

He couldn't help but feel sick himself as he watched her puke up her insides yet again. She knew he was there but she didn't care, not anymore. He'd made it known to her about a month ago. Those eyes that had looked at him had been haunted when she'd said, "Let that be, Harry. We don't need to talk about that."

Ron would never forgive me if I left you do that to yourself.

The thought was unspoken between them. But she knew. That was why she didn't want him to be her hero. He would only be saving her for her brother, and what good was that to her?

"You can't help me, Harry," she'd told him. "This has been going on for longer than you know." _Longer than you could know, because you never looked, did you? You never bothered to see what was right in front of you._

The clues were all there. She'd always been quiet, hadn't she? Indrawn in herself. Ever since first year. When he'd first seen her, she'd been with her mum, begging to go to Hogwarts. It hadn't been what she'd thought, had it? The little girl under a sixteen year old boy's power, one that grew to be a murderer. She never talked about it, even now, evento her family.

Then she'd become chatty and loud. She rotated through boyfriends, never becoming too attached. Such a show. Just an act. How could he not have seen that brittle brightness of her smile? That light in her eyes that kept flashing like an ambulance siren; _Help me, help me, help me…_

How could he not have seen how little she ate one day and the amount she weighed on to her plate the next? How could he have been so blind as to not see her skulk off to the bathroom after every meal? Why had he been so busy looking over at the Slytherin students or the Staff table looking for danger, that he hadn't seen the danger screaming at him in her ear?

He had saved her in second year but he had failed her now.

He was what had driven her to this. No body could like a boy for three years straight, then forget about them. He knew this. He knew every time those wide brown eyes looked at him, they were seeking appraisal. But, by the time he knew, he was too far into his own misery to care.

All she was, was Ron's little sister. All she ever had been was the youngest Weasley. All she ever would be was Ginny, no matter how hard she tried to change herself.

When she puked, it was painful. It wasn't just food she was throwing up, it was everything that should have stayed down; her pain. She would puke much more than she had just eaten. But no matter what she threw out of her, the anguish remained inside and she was never healed.

"You don't understand, Harry. Just…leave me alone, would you?"

He almost wished she hurt herself in some other way, maybe some way more physical. But this was a much more slow process and just as dangerous. He could put no charm on her to make the pain go away, he couldn't watch her every second on the day, and she continued on even when he was there, unwillingly taunting his failure in his face.

"I'm not like you, Harry, I'm not a hero. I can't save anyone." _Not even myself_.

"I'm sorry." _I'm so sorry. I've tried, I really have…_

He came to be with her. He had fought with her before, pulled her away from her toilet. Myrtle watched them with interest, the pain pleasant to her. Now he just sat and watched her. He didn't want her to be alone. He wasn't worried she'd go commit suicide, he wasn't guarding her from herself anymore, he was just staying with her. She'd never told him not to, and it was the only thing he could think of doing.

But he couldn't bear to watch her waste away.

_Smile brightly. Stop. Look at everyone in the room. Shine, little star , shine. Everyone's looking at you. Pause again, smile, maybe give poor Michael a wink (Merlin, how he wants you back!), and walk slowly. Don't thinking, thinking will throw you off. _

"I'm fine, Harry, we all deal with things in different ways. This is just my way, and I wish you'd understand." _But don't leave me, Harry; promise me you won't leave me._

Harry became the hero they all expected of him. On the seventeenth of May of his seventh year, he finally defeated Voldemort. He returned home on his friends shoulders, laughing, cheering, relief flooding through his veins along with the disbelief that, thankfully, he could rest now, that everything would be alright now, the darkness was banished with just one wand wave…

He didn't even miss one less red head in his crowd of admirers. She should have been there, but she wasn't; nobody noticed in the celebrations.

"It's Ginny," Ron told him later, eyes blood shot. "I didn't want to tell you earlier, you looked so happy. McGonagall says she's been making herself sick for months now. She's in the Hospital Wing, about to imported to St Mungos, she seriously ill, Harry, they're worried…"

Hermione had wrapped her arms around him then and Ron cried in her arms. "She's my little sister! I should have protected her!"

"None of us knew, Ron, she never showed any signs. Nobody knew, didn't they not, Harry? It's not Ron's fault, isn't it not?"

"Nobody knew Ron," Harry answered flatly, "and it's not your fault."

That was when Harry realised that he was not a hero at all but how do you save someone that didn't want to be saved. "It's not your fault, Ron."

_You should have saved me, Harry, like you saved everybody else. _

_Where's _my _hero?_

_Why didn't you save me?_


End file.
